Countdown has begun: SD Prarie Dogs 2013

I have to confess two things. First, I’m a rifleman. Always have been. I just like shooting rifles and pistols. I always have.

And secondly, I LOVE shooting prarie dogs at challenging distances and in real field conditions. I’ve never been impressed by paper punching super tight groups off of sand bags at even 100 yard distances. What I love is seeing what I can do when the distance is somewhere beyond 350 yards and that’s a guesstimate, the wind is blowing and swirling, heat is shimmering, and the rest is less-than-perfect.

Two weeks and counting until I head west for some prairie dog action and I can hardly wait. New area, new guide, new rifles to try, but hopefully everything will work out great. I have 3 days booked and hopefully they’re all good, and who knows maybe one will even be that day I’ll be talking about forever?

This year, my brother in law from Newcastle in the United Kingdom will join me. Steve LOVES to shoot, but because of draconian gun laws that basically make it impossible for the vast majority of people to own guns in the UK, with the exception of an air rifle club he belongs to, he can only shoot when he comes here. He’s been wanting to join me on a PD trip and finally this year we managed to line up the schedules.

Needless to say, with 2 boys under the age of 5, I’ve had to grab prep time whenever I could the last few weeks. After struggling all winter to secure the necessary reloading components, I’ve finally got most of the 300 rounds per person per day loaded. I have 1500 of the 2000 rounds of centerfire rifle ammo loaded, so Steve and I have some work still to do when he gets here.

This year, I’ll be taking the following weaponry:

– .223 T/C Contender Pistol with Super 14 barrel and the custom stock I made last winter.
– .223 Savage Axis – See review on this site. I’ve since added a custom Rifle Basix trigger.
– .22-250 Tikka – Astonishing range and accuracy.
– .243 Tikka – Not as fun to shoot, but it bucks the SD winds better than the lighter centerfires
– .22 rimfire pistol and rifles.

Here’s hoping for hot barrels and low winds! Can’t wait.

Grouse

bucket list dream trip for me… good luck

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bucket list dream trip for me… good luck

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Well, I tell you Corey, it might be a fading dream for me too if the situation around ammo and reloading components doesn’t change dramatically in 2014.

It used to be just a matter of slowly working up my ammo supply for each summer’s trip starting in November or December when the deer and pheasant seasons are over and ending sometime in March.

This past year I sat on my @ss the whole time because I couldn’t get components. So when I finally got everything together, it was a mad scramble to book the guide, hotels, and last, but not least, actually get the ammo loaded. This situation of putting together 2000 rounds went from a lot of work, but actually kind of fun, to a major, major nerve-wracking hassle.

It’s terrific fun, but I’m seriously starting to worry that the fun may be over unless this ammo hording trend ends soon. Oh well, we’ll hopefully go out with a bang.

Grouse

Is this easy to get into? That is can you find a place to hunt for free or does it cost? Also must you use sniper weaponry or can you get by with regular guns like
non-scoped .22 long rife, .22 magnum, .223 AR?
Maybe ought-six a few until your shoulder falls off?
Pellet gun?

What general area are you hunting in? Someday I’ll do a trip like this. In the past, my family had lots of dog towns to shoot, but they got rid of them some years ago.

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Is this easy to get into? That is can you find a place to hunt for free or does it cost? Also must you use sniper weaponry or can you get by with regular guns like
non-scoped .22 long rife, .22 magnum, .223 AR?

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IMO, no it would not be easy to get into PD shooting these days. When I started back in the 1980s it was. Ranchers then considered them to be a pest and were glad to have you shoot them for the price of asking. Everything is different now.

Now the ranchers consider everything to be an opportunity to makey money and at the same time a viral plague has wiped out roughly half of the population, so there are simply fewer dog towns and a great town this year could be gone next year due to the plague.

While there are places you can go on public land, these places tend to be well known, and many of them get hit hard and often. Because competition for lesser-known spots is fierce, nobody is going to give away the location of good public land places to go. Bottom line is that to get good shooting that is free to access would take years of scouting to build up a knowledge of a large number of dog town such that you could string together several days of shooting. It is also going to take heavy-duty off road vehicles.

The alterneative is to hire a guide who has land access and local knowledge. Expensive is all relative, but the way I do it these days is to hit some old spots on ranches and public land and then do a few days of guided action. With guide, lodging, food/bev, and don’t forget about the ammo tab, I figure about $500-$600 a day on average.

Unlike the prairie dogs you see in national parks where they sit up and beg for cheetos, in the wild they are wary and once the shooting begins, this is definately a long range game. I would say the average shot is over 200 yards and rarely is any shot under 150, they just don’t let you get that close very often and if you do, it’s not for long.

So the bottom line is yes it is all sniper equipment. If you can’t shoot golf ball sized groups at 250 yards, you’ll just be wasting a ton of ammo and hitting jack schmidt. When shooting, you almost always have to play both drop and windage, so having a gun that can barely hold minute of tennis ball at 100 yards is going to be impossible at 300+ yards in a breeze. And there is always a breeze out west…

The hot smallbore centerfires are king, .220 Swift, .22-250, .223, etc. Larger bores beyond the .243 are simply too hard on the shoulder and the wallet for sustained use. You also need high quality scopes. Iron sites are going to be a “no”.

Grouse

Got it. I’ll stick to the occasional chipmunk and red squirrel.

Sounds like a lot of fun but I was curious about how they taste??

I’ve heard the same thing about populations of PD dying off and getting hit by the different disease’s and wiping out a whole town/colony. Gonna be hard to do a hunt like this in the future if the trend continues.

Good Luck and shoot straight.

*btw, I’m not serious about eating them

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Sounds like a lot of fun but I was curious about how they taste??

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I don’t know. I’ve never found a piece of one that was big enough to cook.

Occasionally, you get what we call the Center Punch shot. This is where the dog is on all fours, but facing directly at you. If you shoot him right between the nostrils, the bullet has time to expand as it passes through the long way.

Needless to say, with poly-tip exploding varmint bullets like the V-Max, the bullet has time to fully fragment after penetration, so terminal performance is–ah-hemh– devastating.

Pasture poodles. Fear me.

Grouse

I wish I was going. I got the chance to go about 10 yrs ago now. We took are long barrel ar’s out for a week with an older guy we know from fedral and brought 10,000 rounds and came back with no ammo what so ever. Man do those thing blow apart. Like chicken nuggets of with the right ammo just a red mist. Have fun man I wish I was going with.

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Man do those thing blow apart. Like chicken nuggets of with the right ammo just a red mist. Have fun man I wish I was going with.

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While vaporizing the has a solid entertainment element on its own, I think my personal favorite is the Flipper Shot.

This is where the prairie dog is standing up on its hind legs, ya know, prairie dogging it. And so you put the crosshairs right about an inch above his family jewels.

The result is given by the spotter as a numeric “by” rating. For example, “Nice shot, that was a 8 X 4.” Or, “Wow! A freaking 12 X 12!”

The first number indicates how high in the air the dog flew, the second number indicates how far from the hole they landed.

Man, I’m so pumped up for this. The only beeeacth about this is having to go cold turkey on the caffeine the week before.

Grouse